The Eve of the War
by xahra99
Summary: The Assassins search for Desmond Miles in New York City and find something they didn't expect. Subject 16 fic. Modern-day. Complete


The Eve of the War.

An Assassin's Creed fan fiction by xahra99

_'And slowly, but surely, they drew their plans against us."_

H.G Wells: The War of the Worlds, chapter one: 'The Eve of the War.'

_New York City. January 2012._

"I've found Miles," Danny said into the receiver.

He heard Nur's gasp as clearly as if she was standing next to him instead of over ten thousand kilometres away on the Farm in Arizona."You've seen him?"

"Not yet." Danny told her. "But I'm headed to his apartment right now." He leant against the scratched plastic window of the phone box and watched a yellow cab cruise down the street in front of him, searching for customers. The cabbie raised an eyebrow quizzically. Danny shook his head. He turned back to the phone.

"Don't make contact," Nur told him.

_I know_, he thought, but said. "Of course."

"I'll send in a team as soon as you verify."

Danny frowned. "I can handle him."

He could almost see Nur bite her lip. "Six weeks ago I wouldn't have doubted that. But things have changed, Danny. I'm finding Templar footprints all over the place. They're searching for Miles too. You know-"

He cut her off. "He's here."

"Once you confirm that we can take it to the next level. Your target will be back in the fold at the Farm, and the Templars can chase their tails all winter in New York for all I care. Good work, Danny. Let me know when you've found him."

She said _when_ instead of _if_, and the assumption coupled with her praise gave Danny enough of a warm glow to ask "What's so special about Miles, anyway? He didn't even pass basic training."

It was neither the time nor the place to voice the curiosity that had consumed him since taking the assignment, but Nur answered anyway. "Miles is an Assassin. That's enough. And we've been chasing him for nine years without success. I think we have to face the possibility that he's a better Assassin than any of us suspected."

"I don't-"

Nur sighed. "Look, I don't care if he's the tenth Doctor Who. Just find him."

"I-"

"Before the Templars do," she said, and slammed the phone down.

"Sure," Danny said into the dead receiver. "Find Miles." He leant against the cold metal struts of the phone box and hung up. "Like it's _easy_."

The Assassins had been hunting Desmond Miles for nine years. He was the coldest of cold cases; a job the Assassins occasionally gave to rookies in the vain hope that they might actually discover something new. It seemed that something had changed.

Danny didn't know what, but he knew from the tension in Nur's voice that it was something to do with the Templars.

He collected his change from the slot, jammed his hands into the pockets of his sweatshirt and elbowed the door open. The sky was grey, threatening snow. The high winds that howled between the skyscrapers froze Danny to the bone. As he reached the end of the street a car skidded through a slick pile of slush, splashing him with icy water. Danny cursed. He missed Arizona's sunny desert winters.

But Miles was here. Danny was sure of it.

He set off down the street towards the Port Authority bus station, ignoring a suspicious glance from an old white woman as he passed. The world had failed to end when the clocks rang in the New Year, but sometimes it seemed like the world had been sliding slowly into chaos ever since the millennium.

_This is the way the world ends_, he thought. _Not with a bang, but with a whimper_.

He reviewed his options as he walked towards the steel-and-concrete monstrosity of the station. The paving slabs were slippery with ice, but Danny's trainers stuck to them like Velcro.

Miles had vanished from the Farm when he was sixteen and Danny was eleven. He'd told nobody where he was going and contacted nobody since.

_Miles doesn't vote_, Danny thought as he walked into the station and found his stop. _He doesn't own a credit or debit card, or a driving licence. Doesn't have a Social Security number. He isn't on Facebook or Twitter or MySpace. He hasn't registered with a college, hospital, or prison in the last nine years. He hasn't died, married, divorced or bought a house. He doesn't pay tax, and the IRS can find almost anyone these days._

But Miles had left a trace of himself behind. He'd taken almost everything when he vanished from the Farm. Everything-apart from a stack of motorbike magazines as thick as a phone directory, each one annotated and marked with loving, adolescent care. Like all his predecessors, Danny had tried the obvious avenues. And, like all his predecessors, he'd found nothing. Zip, nada, zilch. When he'd found nothing, he'd gone back to basics. Based on the evidence of the motorcycle magazines, he'd created an online persona and trawled all the bike forums he could for the smallest scrap of information. Danny had known more about the intricacies of motorcycles than he had ever wanted to know by the time he found a chat room user called bikelover1987. He was the right age, the right race, and there was something in the way he described himself that had Danny's spider-sense tingling as soon as he looked at it. Danny had called in a favour from one of the techs at the Farm, who'd traced the IP address and used it to track the details of the user's email account. The name that came up wasn't Miles or Desmond, but that didn't bother Danny. Anyone who was smart enough to hide from the Assassins for nine years wasn't going to use his real identity.

_Even if he does lack originality while picking Internet usernames_, Danny thought as he boarded his bus. The bus rumbled into life a few minutes later and left the station while Danny unfolded his map. The lousy weather hadn't prevented the locals from heading out to dine or party as they did each evening. Pretty girls wearing fur-trimmed coats and fur-trimmed coats and their handsome escorts streaked past in taxicabs outside as Danny rehearsed the details of Miles' address in his head. He folded the map away after he had memorised both address and directions and got out at his stop. A few of the partygoers disembarked after him. Danny followed the beautiful, high-cheekboned women down the street. The cracked windows of the shops that lined the road reflected a stocky, compact figure, with skin the colour of sun-baked earth and short hair gelled into spikes.

Danny reached the shopping mall at the opposite end of the street within a few minutes and looked around for his next landmark. Instead his gaze fell on a row of tourist payphones recessed into the concrete walls. The wintry evening murk was slipping into dusk, but it was not yet dark. He had a few minutes to kill.

He crumpled the sheet of addresses into a ball and stuffed it into the pocket of his trousers as he approached the payphones. The tips of his bare fingers touched cool metal as he lifted the receiver and fed coins into the payphone's greedy slot. The phone call probably wasn't a good idea, but he seemed to be fresh out of those these days.

He heard the phone ring twice before somebody answered.

"Hello?"

"Han?"

"Danny!" Hannah's voice was husky and delighted. He could almost see her eyes sparkling."Any luck?"

"I could tell you that," Danny said, keeping his tone light, "but then I'd have to kill you."

""Let me guess...no?"

He smiled, although he knew she couldn't see him. "I just called to wish you a happy Christmas. It might be a while before I can see you again, and –"

She interrupted. "Don't let the work get you down. You didn't think this was going to be easy, did you?"

"For a moment there I just hoped it might be," Danny said. He imagined Hannah nodding as he talked. "Besides, I shouldn't really tell you this, but I'm close."

"How close?"

"Closer than anyone's been in years. I was beginning to think I'd have more chance of finding Miles if I pasted his face onto milk cartons myself. But I guess everybody gets a break sometime, right?"

"You'll find him," she said. "Think of it as an early Christmas present. I'm sad you can't be here-"

"Hannah-"

"But the Brotherhood comes first." She heaved a mock-sigh. "I suppose you'll be back in Arizona soon enough."

"I'll pick you up a great present," he promised.

"Just come home. And Danny?"

"What?"

"Merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas to you, too," he murmured.

A moment later the last of his coins ran out and Hannah's voice was replaced with a dial tone. Not for the first time, Danny blessed whatever god of lost technology possessed people to hold on to their old call boxes when even villagers in the African veldt had switched to mobile phones. The Assassins preferred payphones. Mobiles could be traced. Phone boxes were harder.

He hung up and headed down the narrow suburban streets. The houses pressed closely together as if sheltering from the icy cold. Christmas garlands glittered in their windows behind a thin sheet of frost. Piles of rubbish choked the pavements, spilling crushed Coke cans and Chex cracker boxes out into the gutters. Snow slithered from the streetlights and flopped onto the pavement in front of him as Danny walked past. He shivered; trying and failing to recall desert heat.

When he reached the end of the street he chose an alley directly to his right. At the next crossroads he turned to his left, following the walls of a dilapidated, boarded-up church. He turned left again into a dead end choked with rubbish. Crisp packets and discarded Coke bottles littered the cobbles. A stack of plastic crates leaned against one wall. Just above the crates hung the rusting bars of a vintage fire escape.

Danny looked up at the ladder's narrow bars. He removed his knitted fingerless gloves, flexed his hands and jumped. The ladder was easy to climb, and in just a few seconds he was thirty feet above the ground. The wind whipped at his hoodie. He inhaled and cold air stung his nostrils in the bitter breeze. He checked his bearings, stamped his sneakers gently into the snow to check his grip on the tiles and set off on his run.

The inch-thick blanket of snow on the roofs muffled his footsteps as he jogged across the tiles. His breathing quickened and then relaxed into a steady rhythm. He increased his speed and the icy wind tugged at his hair. He leapt a narrow alley without breaking his stride. Manhattan's skyscrapers loomed out of the fog like the prow of a doomed pirate ship.

He slowed to a walk once he was close to his location. The roofs were steeper here and less well maintained. Danny negotiated the icy slopes with care. He skirted a dormer window and walked to the very edge of the roof. The toes of his battered sneakers hung over thin air.

From his vantage point Danny could see Miles' apartment building. It was a shabby fifties'-era concrete block, as grey and grubby as the trampled snow that surrounded it. It was three levels high. Miles's apartment was on the second level.

Danny jogged down the spine of a row of terraced houses. The city lights glowed around him as he ran. Occasionally he caught snatches of chattered conversation from people below. Nobody looked up. The wind that whipped at his hair smelt of snow.

When he reached the end of the roofs he gathered himself and leapt, launching feet-first like a long jumper through three metres of empty air. His sneakers absorbed the jolt as he hit the railing of the condo and bunny-hopped off it onto the concrete floor of the complex's balcony. If he'd been showing off, he'd probably have thrown in a flip or a somersault for good measure, but this was work.

_Miles didn't know what he was missing when he walked away from this_, he thought.

He prowled the walkway outside the rooms, searching for Miles's number. As the adrenaline ebbed from his body he started to shiver again. He stuffed his hands into the marsupial pocket of his hoodie. The condo, like the street, was in desperate need of a trash pickup. Empty pizza boxes and shattered beer bottles littered the walkway. Danny dodged them as best he could.

He found number 56 without much difficulty. The door was painted with the same peach paint as every other door in the complex. Danny took a deep breath and knocked. He had not expected anybody to answer-the online user had mentioned that he worked late several times a week-and nobody did. Danny knocked again. When nothing happened he glanced around and dug into his pocket. When he had detached the tiny stainless-steel lock pick held there with a safety pin he straightened and looked around again.

It took him less than a minute to pick the door of number 56. When he was done he leant casually against the door and listened for any sounds from inside the room. When nothing happened he opened the door smoothly, slipped in and swung the door closed behind him in one smooth motion.

The room was pitch black. The threadbare curtains had been pulled closed against the cold. Danny flicked a maglite from the pocket of his black chinos. The tiny light was barely enough to see by, but he knew it wouldn't attract much attention.

The first thing he saw was an old-fashioned computer, the colour of condom rubber, with a few motorbike decals glued onto the tower. The computer sat on a rickety old card table next to a stack of creased bike magazines. The computer chair was missing one wheel. More magazines had been stacked under its base to hold it level. A hooded sweatshirt had been thrown casually upon the floor. The air smelt of cheap deodorant. It was a typical guy's room.

Danny moved cautiously between the furniture, searching for something that would either confirm or deny his theory.

He found it pinned to a corkboard behind the unmade bed.

The owner of the room had tacked up a dozen photos and some mail. The photos featured a man that did not look at all like Desmond Miles. The nose was all wrong. The hair was a dark brown rather than black. The name typed on the letterheads of the electricity bill pinned next to the photos was Michael Kaplan.

Danny searched the rest of the room automatically. His heart sank as his hands rifled through piles of clothes and boxed mementos. After a few minutes he stopped searching and crouched in the centre of the room, maglite pointing at the carpet's psychedelic paisley swirls.

It wasn't Desmond Miles.

Danny fought bitter disappointment. He had been certain that the man he'd chatted to online had been Miles in disguise. He could have taken a degree in Desmond Miles and passed with flying colours. Worse, if Miles was not in New York, then Danny had no idea where he was.

He blew out a long breath and flexed his fingers. As he turned to open the door he heard a car pull into the parking lot. A second car followed it, and then a third.

Danny paused. There was something wrong about the cars. They didn't sound like the sort of car a condo resident would have. The engines purred like well-oiled panthers and cut off abruptly. Danny heard the sound of car doors opening. He flicked his maglite off. Once the room had returned to its former stuffy darkness he crept to the window and moved the curtain a fraction of a centimetre so that he could see out. The view across the parking lot wasn't great, but it was close enough for jazz.

The men who piled out of the cars certainly weren't condo residents. They had the neatly slicked back hair of corporate employee and wore suits that looked expensive. Seconds later, Danny heard footsteps drumming on the concrete steps.

He cursed and stepped back from the window as the footsteps drew closer. He looked desperately around the room and saw nothing except blackness. He might as well have closed his eyes.

The glass rattled in the window as the footsteps reached the first floor.

Danny knew he had only a few seconds left to make a decision. He took a deep breath, and then picked up a garish baseball cap from Michael Kaplan's desk. He opened the door as quickly and as quietly as he could manage. Scooping a pile of pizza boxes from the floor, he pulled the cap down over his face and headed in the direction of the approaching footsteps.

When the agents turned the corner they saw only a young Asian man with his face half-hidden behind a stack of pizza cartons. Danny felt their gazes flick towards him, over him and then away.

He walked right up to the first man. "Uh, sorry?" he said, his voice dripping concern."Wrong address. D'you know where number four is?"

The agent mumbled in the negative. Danny shrugged and continued along the hallway, studying each door as if number four might magically appear like platform nine-and-three-quarters. The rest of the agents pushed past him without a second look. Danny did not look back. Behind him he heard the crash of splintering wood.

He calculated that he had a few minutes before they figured out what had happened, but it was more like three seconds. A shout echoed from the condo walls and then he heard the sound of expensive leather shoes beating down the concrete floor.

Danny dropped the pizza boxes and ran to the railing. The baseball cap flew from his head and floated down to the courtyard below. The yard was awash with suits. He glanced desperately around for other options while his heart pounded in the cage of his ribs. Bunches of ragged kumaon palm trees stood at each corner of the condo courtyard. They looked half-dead. Danny guessed that they were meant to hide the tall concrete poles that held the courtyard lights. They failed at that, but they looked as though they might be very easy to climb...

He leapt for the nearest tree. As he jumped he heard a popping noise. It was far too soft to be a gun. It sounded like a party popper, only instead of a shower of confetti Danny glimpsed a flash of shiny metal wire.

Danny knew what a taser looked like.

He reached the top of the railing in one jump, balanced for a second on the toes of his sneakers and dived for the palm. It was too wide for his hands to comfortably grip, but he held onto it anyway. The soles of his sneakers caught on the roughened bark as he began to climb. He started off slowly, clinging like a monkey in the movies with his arms held out stiffly at a ninety-degree angle to the trunk, but he gained speed fast. By the time he passed the third storey of the condo he was on a roll. Somebody talked quietly and urgently into a cell phone. White shirts below even whiter faces turned towards Danny in surprise as he raced by. He did not pause for a closer look. He climbed until he was two metres above the roof and jumped off, tucking into a roll as he hit the tiles. Momentum carried him halfway along the ridgepole and a few long strides carried him to the edge of the roof.

Angry shouts echoed in the cold, clear night air.

Danny ran.

He ran as hard and as fast as he could. He no longer felt the cold. Adrenaline pumped through his bloodstream. His muscles trembled with effort. His peripheral vision focused down; his hearing dimmed.

All that was left was the chase.

_Come find me now, you bastards,_ he thought with sudden, savage joy. He leapt from the condo to the flat expanse of a 7/11 roof; from the flat roof to a balcony; from the balcony to the ground. He heard another popping sound and flinched. Nothing hit him. The suits, whoever they were, were worse shots than Imperial storm troopers. The only way they were going to hit Danny was if he accidentally ran into their tasers.

He wondered briefly why they weren't using guns and then blocked it from his mind. There would be time enough for questions later. Right now he had to run.

He lowered his head and sprinted down the street. His shadow raced before him, arms pumping; a spindly Struwwelpeter caricature. Stars burned like white fire above his head, only partly masked by the sodium glow of the streetlamps.

A woman turned the corner in front of Danny. She glanced up in surprise and lowered her mobile phone as Danny raced towards her. He snatched the phone from her hand as he hurried past. He heard her surprised scream Doppler into silence as he hit the call reject button and stabbed in a number one-handed with fingers grown suddenly thick and clumsy.

"Nur!" he gasped as soon as the call connected. "It's Danny! They're chasing me. Near Fiftieth Street!"

"Who-"

"I think-" Danny panted, "they're Templars."

A car screeched around the corner behind him. Danny swung his head a little to the left and noticed an alley yawning up ahead. He dived into it, one hand to his ear, his body angling to the side like a champion track motorcyclist. He waited for a second for a reply from Nur, some sort of assent or reply, but he only heard a beep. The phone flashed an OUT OF CREDIT message. Danny slowed to a jog, losing precious seconds. He removed the sim card and battery from the phone and stuffed it into his pocket. The card went into a reeking Dumpster. Once he came out the other side of the alley he tossed the battery into the road and had just time to see it crushed under the wheels of a truck a second later. He dropped the phone into the water as he ran across the river. Neon glinted on the water's black surface as it rippled.

Danny slowed. Hearing and peripheral vision returned in a rush. His heartbeat pounded in his ears and his thighs ached. He could see the network of streets that surrounded him in his mind's eye. The route he had to take glowed in his memory. He could neither hear nor see any signs of pursuit.

He began to relax.

The reprieve only lasted a moment. As he turned into the next street a car shot out from a side road nearly in front of him. Danny slammed one hand on the car's bonnet and vaulted its hood, his tracksuit bottoms sliding neatly over painted metal. The seat of his pants nearly snagged on the Merc's hood ornament and Danny had a nasty vision of himself racing through the streets of New Jersey with his ass hanging out of his trousers for second before his trainers touched the asphalt. The car's doors spilled open and men piled out from the back seats. Danny heard their footsteps racing after him, bracketed by a couple of gunshots. Something ricocheted from the pavement behind him. It wasn't a taser.

Danny put on a sudden burst of speed.

_It was a set up_, he thought as he ran. _Was Miles really there at all? Or was it me they were after?_

He heard the footsteps behind him fading. The car's engine started up. Headlights flared into life behind him.

Another car turned into the street in front of him.

Danny did the first thing he could do. He saw an alley to his left and turned into it without even thinking. There was a wire-mesh fence at the end of the narrow street. For all intents and purposes, it might as well have been a climbing wall.

Danny grinned as he raced towards it. He saw a flicker of motion from the corner of his eye, but it was too late. Somebody stepped out into the alley. The shadowy figure held a small plastic box as if it were a gun. They pointed it at Danny and pulled the trigger. He heard a soft pop, like a champagne cork releasing, a fraction of a second the before the taser studs hit him mid-thigh.

It felt like someone had punched him in the back of his leg for an instant before his muscles knotted up in a blaze of pain. He overbalanced; hit the tarmac. Every one of Danny's muscles tensed. His legs jerked spastically. His hands clawed at thin air. It felt like the worst full-body cramp ever. Danny clapped his right hand to his leg. His left hand pounded at the concrete to keep himself from blacking out. He tasted copper. Convulsing, he rolled onto his side.

The stars had clouded over.

He heard footsteps and felt the metal fangs of a taser at the base of his skull an instant before the Templar pressed the button and his world blinked out like a TV screen.

Danny woke to pain and bright light. He closed his eyes again and slowly became aware of other sensations around him. He heard the hum of air conditioning and a whirring noise he couldn't identify. Cold metal touched his arms. He slitted one eye open and discovered that he was lying on a rigid steel table, like the sort they used in medical dramas.

He saw a man standing over him. He looked like Santa Claus, if Santa had been thin, humourless and wore a white lab coat rather than a red and white suit.

"You are Daniel Phan Lind?" he asked.

"Danny," Danny said automatically.

The scientist carried on as if Danny hadn't spoken. "Good afternoon, Mister Lind. Welcome to Aberstego. You've been asleep for a long time."

Danny rubbed his eyes. He didn't feel as if he had been asleep. Instead of feeling rested, he was exhausted. His leg ached with a dull throb."Who are you?"

The scientist nodded. "My name is Warren Vidic, Mister Lind. And you, I believe, are an Assassin." He cocked his head as if waiting for an answer.

Danny ignored him and looked around. The room was huge and clinically sterile. It was painted in uniform shades of white and grey. Massive plate-glass windows took up a whole wall to Danny's right. Over to his left, heavy steel doors that looked like airlocks studded the wall. A strange piece of machinery stood on a pedestal between Danny and the doors. It made the whirring noise Danny had noticed as he regained consciousness. _The future as designed by Apple_, thought Danny. "Aberstego?" he said when he had returned his gaze to Vidic. "You _are_ Templars. You kidnapped me."

Vidic nodded. "Correct on both counts, Mister Lind. Though I would hardly call it kidnapping." He shrugged and made a note on a clipboard that lay on the table beside Danny's feet. "We were searching for Desmond Miles, but I suppose you'll have to do." He looked sceptically at Danny's face. "Do you have any Assassin ancestors, Mister Lind?"

Danny stared at him.

Vidic raised his eyebrows. "I'd advise you to think carefully about your reply," he said. "We're researching genetic memories. Assassin bloodlines, to be specific."

"And if I don't have Assassin bloodlines?" Danny asked.

"Then you'll be disposed of," Vidic said crisply. "Don't lie." He gestured to the machine. "The Animus can tell."

"What if I refuse to co-operate?" Danny didn't like the look in Vidic's eyes. The scientist looked like the sort of guy who'd take something apart to figure out how it worked, and then forget to put it back together. "What if I don't tell you anything?"

Vidic smiled. It was a thin, unpleasant smile. "Then we'll induce a coma and continue anyway."

Danny glanced around, gauging chances of escape. Vidic noticed and sniffed. "This is a secure facility, Mister Lind. Don't even think about escaping. You would have no chance."

Danny kept his opinions on his chances to himself. He was alive. There was always a chance. He nodded reluctantly. "My grandfather-he was an Assassin."

"And the rest?" Vidic didn't sound interested. "Vietnamese?"

"Cambodian," Danny said reluctantly.

Vidic nodded and made another mark on his clipboard. "Excellent," he said with a smile. "Welcome to our project-Subject Sixteen."

Author's Note: This fic started as a modern Assassin AU and then morphed into an exploration of modern free running. The character of Danny was directly inspired by the EMC Monkeys video 'Urban Ninja' on YouTube. I think one of the AC tie-in comics says that Subject Sixteen's real name was Michael, but I'm unsure if this is canon and Danny was one of those characters that just crash-landed in my head anyway.


End file.
